Chapter 7. Configuring a Basic Overcloud with the Web UI

This chapter provides the basic configuration steps for an OpenStack Platform environment using the web UI. An overcloud with a basic configuration contains no custom features. However, you can add advanced configuration options to this basic overcloud and customize it to your specifications using the instructions in the Advanced Overcloud Customization guide.

For the examples in this chapter, all nodes are bare metal systems using IPMI for power management. For more supported power management types and their options, see Appendix B, Power Management Drivers.

A set of bare metal machines for your nodes. The number of node required depends on the type of overcloud you intend to create. These machines also must comply with the requirements set for each node type. These nodes do not require an operating system. The director copies a Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 image to each node.

One network connection for our Provisioning network, which is configured as a native VLAN. All nodes must connect to this network.

All other network types use the Provisioning network for OpenStack services. However, you can create additional networks for other network traffic types.

7.1. Accessing the Web UI

Users access the director’s web UI through SSL. For example, if the IP address of your undercloud is 192.168.24.1, then the address to access the UI is https://192.168.24.1. The web UI initially presents a login screen with fields for the following:

Username - The administration user for the director. The default is admin.

Password - The password for the administration user. Run sudo hiera admin_password as the stack user on the undercloud host terminal to find out the password.

When logging in to the UI, the UI accesses the OpenStack Identity Public API and obtains the endpoints for the other Public API services. These services include

Component

UI Purpose

OpenStack Identity (keystone)

For authentication to the UI and for endpoint discovery of other services.

OpenStack Orchestration (heat)

For the status of the deployment.

OpenStack Bare Metal (ironic)

For control of nodes.

OpenStack Object Storage (swift)

For storage of the Heat template collection or plan used for the overcloud creation.

OpenStack Workflow (mistral)

To access and execute director tasks.

OpenStack Messaging (zaqar)

A websocket-based service to find the status of certain tasks.

The UI interacts directly with these Public APIs, which is why your client system requires access to their endpoints. The director exposes these endpoints through SSL/TLS encrypted paths on the Public VIP (undercloud_public_host in your undercloud.conf file). Each path corresponds to the service. For example, https://192.168.24.2:443/keystone maps to the OpenStack Identity Public API.

If you aim to change the endpoints or use a different IP for endpoint access, the director UI reads settings from the /var/www/openstack-tripleo-ui/dist/tripleo_ui_config.js file. This file uses the following parameters:

Parameter

Description

keystone

The Public API for the OpenStack Identity (keystone) service. The UI automatically discovers the endpoints for the other services through this service, which means you only need to define this parameter. However, you can define custom URLs for the other endpoints if necessary.

heat

The Public API for the OpenStack Orchestration (heat) service.

ironic

The Public API for the OpenStack Bare Metal (ironic) service.

swift

The Public API for the OpenStack Object Storage (swift) service.

mistral

The Public API for the OpenStack Workflow (mistral) service.

zaqar-websocket

The websocket for the OpenStack Messaging (zaqar) service.

zaqar_default_queue

The messaging queue to use for the OpenStack Messaging (zaqar) service. The default is tripleo.

excludedLanguages

The UI has been translated in multiple languages, whcih you can select either from the login screen or within the UI. You can exclude certain languages based on the ITEF Language codes. The following language codes can be excluded: de, en-GB, es, fr, id, ja, ko-KR, tr-TR, and zh-CN.

The following is an example tripleo_ui_config.js file where 192.168.24.2 is the Public VIP for the undercloud:

7.2. Navigating the Web UI

The UI provides three main sections:

Plans

A menu item at the top of the UI. This page acts as the main UI section and allows you to define the plan to use for your overcloud creation, the nodes to assign to each role, and the status of the current overcloud. This section also provides a deployment workflow to guide you through each step of the overcloud creation process, including setting deployment parameters and assigning your nodes to roles.

Nodes

A menu item at the top of the UI. This page acts as a node configuration section and provides methods for registering new nodes and introspecting registered nodes. This section also shows information such as the power state, introspection status, provision state, and hardware information.

Clicking on the overflow menu item (the triple dots) on the right of each node displays the disk information for the chosen node.

Validations

Clicking on the Validations menu option displays a panel on the right side of the page.

This section provides a set of system checks for:

Pre-deployment

Post-deployment

Pre-Introspection

Pre-Upgrade

Post-Upgrade

These validation tasks run automatically at certain points in the deployment. However, you can also run them manually. Click the Play button for a validation task you want to run. Click the title of each validation task to run it, or click a validation title to view more information about it.

7.3. Importing an Overcloud Plan in the Web UI

The director UI requires a plan before configuring the overcloud. This plan is usually a Heat template collection, like the one on your undercloud at /usr/share/openstack-tripleo-heat-templates. In addition, you can customize the plan to suit your hardware and environment requirements. For more information about customizing the overcloud, see the Advanced Overcloud Customization guide.

The undercloud installation and configuration automatically uploads a plan. You can also import multiple plans in the web UI. Click on the All Plans breadcrumb on the Plan screen. This displays the current Plans listing. Change between multiple plans by clicking on a card.

Click Import Plan and a window appears asking you for the following information:

Plan Name - A plain text name for the plan. For example overcloud.

Upload Type - Choose whether to upload a Tar Archive (tar.gz) or a full Local Folder (Google Chrome only).

After entering your node information, click Register Nodes at the bottom of the window.

The director registers the nodes. Once complete, you can use the UI to perform introspection on the nodes.

7.5. Inspecting the Hardware of Nodes in the Web UI

The director UI can run an introspection process on each node. This process causes each node to boot an introspection agent over PXE. This agent collects hardware data from the node and sends it back to the director. The director then stores this introspection data in the OpenStack Object Storage (swift) service running on the director. The director uses hardware information for various purposes such as profile tagging, benchmarking, and manual root disk assignment.

This provides a method to include different features from your overcloud. These features are defined in the plan’s capabilities-map.yaml file with each feature using a different environment file. For example, under Storage you can select Storage Environment, which the plan maps to the environments/storage-environment.yaml file and allows you to configure NFS, iSCSI, or Ceph settings for your overcloud. The Other tab contains any environment files detected in the plan but not listed in the capabilities-map.yaml, which is useful for adding custom environment files included in the plan. Once you have selected the features to include, click Save Changes.

Parameters

This includes various base-level and environment file parameters for your overcloud. Once you have modified your parameters, click Save Changes.

7.8. Adding Roles in the Web UI

At the bottom-right corner of the Configure Roles and Assign Nodes section is a Manage Roles icon.

Clicking this icon displays a selection of cards representing available roles to add to your environment. To add a role, mark the checkbox in the role’s top-right corner.

Once you have selected your roles, click Save Changes.

7.9. Assigning Nodes to Roles in the Web UI

After registering and inspecting the hardware of each node, you assign them into roles from your plan.

To assign nodes to a role, scroll to the 3 Configure Roles and Assign Nodes section on the Plan screen. Each role uses a spinner widget to assign the number of nodes to a role. The available nodes per roles are based on the tagged nodes in Section 7.6, “Tagging Nodes into Profiles in the Web UI”.

This changes the *Count parameter for each role. For example, if you change the number of nodes in the Controller role to 3, this sets the ControllerCount parameter to 3. You can also view and edit these count values in the Parameters tab of the deployment configuration. See Section 7.7, “Editing Overcloud Plan Parameters in the Web UI” for more information.

7.10. Editing Role Parameters in the Web UI

Each node role provides a method for configuring role-specific parameters. Scroll to 3 Configure Roles and Assign Nodes roles on the Plan screen. Click the Edit Role Parameters icon next to the role name.

A window appears that shows two main tabs:

Parameters

This includes various role specific parameters. For example, if you are editing the controller role, you can change the default flavor for the role using the OvercloudControlFlavor parameter. Once you have modified your role specific parameters, click Save Changes.

Services

This defines the service-specific parameters for the chosen role. The left panel shows a list of services that you select and modify. For example, to change the time zone, click the OS::TripleO:Services:Timezone service and change the TimeZone parameter to your desired time zone. Once you have modified your service-specific parameters, click Save Changes.

Network Configuration

This allows you to define an IP address or subnet range for various networks in your overcloud.

7.11. Viewing the network topology in the Web UI

Ensure that you enabled Network Isolation in the second step of the deployment configuration.

Procedure

To confirm your network configuration prior to deployment:

On the Deployment Plan page, scroll to 4 Configure Networks.

Click Edit Role and select the Advanced Network Configuration tab. This tab shows the network topology so you can confirm the configuration.

7.12. Starting the Overcloud Creation in the Web UI

Once the overcloud plan is configured, you can start the overcloud deployment. This involves scrolling to the 4 Deploy section and clicking Validate and Deploy.

If you have not run or passed all the validations for the undercloud, a warning message appears. Make sure that your undercloud host satisfies the requirements before running a deployment.

When you are ready to deploy, click Deploy.

The UI regularly monitors the progress of the overcloud’s creation and display a progress bar indicating the current percentage of progress. The View detailed information link displays a log of the current OpenStack Orchestration stacks in your overcloud.

Wait until the overcloud deployment completes.

After the overcloud creation process completes, the 4 Deploy section displays the current overcloud status and the following details:

IP address - The IP address for accessing your overcloud.

Password - The password for the OpenStack admin user on the overcloud.